President Barack Obama's choice to head the Justice Department's civil rights division has failed a Senate test vote and his confirmation is in jeopardy.

The vote was 47-52, short of the needed majority. Eight Democrats joined Republicans to block the nominee, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., who voted "no" so he would be able to bring up the nomination again in the future.

The controversy over Debo Adegbile stems from legal representation of a man who is currently imprisoned for the murder of a Philadelphia policeman decades ago.

It was unclear what the next step will be for his supporters. Several Democrats joined all Senate Republicans in voting to prevent confirmation.

Adegbile was at the NAACP Legal Defense fund when the organization began representing Mumia Abu-Jamal, who was appealing his conviction in the killing in 1981 of a police officer.

"A furious Mr. Reid hinted that Republicans opposition was based on racism, pointing to to several other black nominees that GOP senators had opposed earlier. But in the case of Mr. Adegbile, his defense of Abu-Jamal was too much for even some Democrats."

In December of 1981, twenty-five year old Officer Daniel Faulkner was conducting a routine traffic stop when Wesley Cookalso known as, Mumia Abu-Jamalshot him in the back. He then stood over Officer Faulkner and shot him several more times in the chest. As Officer Faulkner lay dying in the street, defenseless, Abu-Jamal shot him in the face, killing him. At the hospital, Abu-Jamal bragged that he had shot Officer Faulkner and expressed his hope that he would die.

At trial, he was remorseless. He turned the trial into political theater, interrupting the proceedings, insulting the judge, and even smirking at Officer Faulkners widow when his blood-stained shirt was held up in court as evidence.

Four eyewitnesses saw Abu-Jamal gun down Officer Faulkner. Three more witnesses at the hospital heard him confess to the crime. Ballistics evidence proved that Officer Faulkner had been shot with a handgun that was registered to Abu-Jamal, which was found at the scene of the murder, along with shell casings.

Based on overwhelming evidence, Abu-Jamal was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. What followed was a thirty year effort by the far-left to glorify Abu-Jamal and to exonerate him. This effort was taken up by law professors, left-wing activists, and in 2009, by the organization which the nominee before us led for several years, the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.

When the LDF became Abu Jamals co-counsel in 2011, its press release called him a symbol of racial injustice. It said Abu-Jamals conviction and death sentence are relics of a time and place that was notorious for police abuse and racial discrimination. An LDF lawyer attended rallies for Abu-Jamal. She said it was absolutely an honor to represent him; and that doing so was her pleasure. And she said, There is no question in the mind of anyone at the Legal Defense Fund that the justice system has completely and utterly failed Mumia Abu-Jamal.

This demagoguery of the murder of a defenseless police officer has shocked and offended law enforcement officers from across the country.

The current District Attorney of Philadelphia, Seth Williams, wrote the Judiciary Committee last month to oppose the nominees confirmation. He wrote: Apart from being patently false, moreover, these claims are personally insulting to me. As an African-American, I know all too well the grievous consequences of racial discrimination and prejudice. I also know that Abu-Jamal was convicted and sentenced because of the evidence, not because of his race. And I have continued to fight for the jurys verdict because it was the just result.

Pre-Obamacare, no democrat would have opposed a Barack nominee. The fact that vulnerable senators find it necessary to distance themselves from him is telling. Even without voter I.D., the massive fraud that the dems will attempt won’t be sufficient to save the Senate for them.

The Dems wouldn’t have dared to oppose The Won, before Obamacare - and the Ukraine. He revealed himself to be so incompetent and unaware that he’s the laughing stock of the entire world, and I think this is finally beginning to penetrate the thick Democrat skulls.

Dare I hope that even The Magic Won might become another victim of reality bites?

Lying POS Dick Thornburgh, who claimed he would have no trouble signing death warrants, and lying POS Ed Rendell, who specifically promised Faulkner's widow that he would see Wesley Cook executed, allowed this farce to continue to the point that after many years of denials by appeals courts the defense finally found a sympathetic judge who for all practical purposes commuted the sentence from death.

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